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Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Preservation and Proposition

Our mission is to document the pivotal Second Amendment events that occurred in Frontier Mercersburg, and its environs, and to heighten awareness of the importance of these events in the founding of our Nation.

We are dedicated to the preservation of the place where the Second Amendment was "born" and to the proposition that the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") is the keystone of our Liberty and the Republic.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Blog Moderator Comment: Nebraska school officials want a boy named "Hunter" (who is deaf) to change his name because in sign language you "point your finger like a gun". And pointing your finger like a gun in a ZERO TOLERANCE environment is "forbidden". . .you can't make this stuff up!

By Rick Jensen - 6/7/2013

Liberals believe in creating institutions to solve problems.

Conservatives believe the individual is better at solving problems.

A 3 year-old deaf boy in Lincoln, Nebraska is being bullied by public school officials to change his name because the hand sign for Hunter Spanjer looks like a weapon. The Grand Island school district has a policy that forbids kids bringing to school "any instrument ... that looks like a weapon." They can't change the sign, because it's the official hand sign for his name, registered through S.E.E., Sign Exact English.

Pressure from the National Association of the Deaf and the public has compelled the district into allowing the deaf boy to keep his name. Sadly, there is no humility or sense of shame from district authorities.The fight for the individual succeeded. The institution proved to be a gargantuan failure, and neither the district superintendent nor the school principal was fired.

An 8 year-old Baltimore student tries to chew his Pop-Tart into the shape of mountain. It looks more like a gun, so he says, "bang bang." Anne Arundel County authorities declare this to be an "inappropriate" use of his imagination and so they suspended him from school.

Neither the district superintendent nor the school principal was fired.

Kicking children out of school for harmlessly exercising creativity is what passes for education in a world where parents and teachers feel they have no influence on their local schools.

Just a few weeks ago, a seven-year-old Virginia boy was suspended for pretending a pencil was a gun at his Suffolk school. His father and neighbors were furious. Then the story went away. But not the education. What did the boy learn? He learned that admitting to doing something he didn't know was bad behavior will get you the maximum punishment. He learned that apologizing for doing something that he didn't know was bad behavior will get you the maximum punishment. He also learned that teachers and principals do not want to teach children that pencils can be dangerous. They want to teach you that using your imagination to pretend any object is a gun is punishable with exile from society. He learned that they use so-called "zero tolerance" laws to cold-heartedly deny children an education in favor of capitulation to the politically popular reaction of the day.

Neither the district superintendent nor the school principal was fired.

A second-grade teacher was suspended without pay in April, charged with possessing, carrying, storing or using a weapon for showing his students the proper ways to use tools. According to Washington Irving Elementary School officials, these deadly weapons included wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers. They were kept in a secured toolbox out of the children's reach.

Perhaps the Washington Irving Elementary School principal should hold an assembly during which she could deliver a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating how children should call police if they ever find an unattended wrench.

Sadly, neither the district superintendent nor the school principal was fired.

These institutional "solutions" to violence in schools are an obvious failure to everyone except the principals and superintendents who are delightfully relieved of their responsibilities to educate and consider the context of each student's behavior.

In this utopian liberal world, all carbon-based life forms are equally subservient to the draconian laws bequeathed from the holy sanctuaries of their state legislatures.

It's time to show zero tolerance for these small-minded, short-sighted bureaucrats infesting your public schools.

In the real world, we parents need to exercise our rights and duty by protesting, lobbying and forcing the firings or resignations of principals and superintendents (not teachers) around the country who use these zero tolerance laws as a weapon against imagination and an excuse for avoiding the difficult job of actually getting to know each student and properly guiding and directing them toward learning.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.